Good Listens: Nine Poems on Being Lost and Found in Language
Published: April 26, 2022
As April draws to a close, we celebrate National Poetry Month with some good poems on and around the topic of language and culture. Get inspired with these playful and provocative pieces (or maybe write a poem of your own)!
- See a clip of Susan Hiller’s “Lost and Found,” which features the sound waves of people speaking 23 extinct, endangered and revived languages.
- Peter Morin on Susan Hiller’s “The Last Silent Movie” reflects on the threat of language extinction, and on the nature of a language that is lived.
- In the prose poem (or very short story) “On Exactitude in Science,” Jorge Luis Borges unfolds a hypothetical map that matches the territory it describes.
- Stephen Fry’s “Kinetic Typography - Language” takes a giddy handle on the topic.
- In the prose poem (or very short story) “On Exactitude in Science,” Jorge Luis Borges unfolds a hypothetical map that matches the territory it describes.
- “Accents,” by Denice Frohman finds family and community ties in the accents we carry.
- In “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye, language is the key to understanding and community.
- “Lexiconography 1” by Heid E. Erdrich and Margaret Noodin explores the language around the nearly extinct wooden clothespin.
- "To Make Use of Water" by Safia Elhillo explores the language that gets left behind sometimes.
- “Lexiconography 1” by Heid E. Erdrich and Margaret Noodin explores the language around the nearly extinct wooden clothespin.
- “Terminal Index” by Victoria Adukwei Bulley is part of the MOTHER TONGUES series celebrating contemporary black and brown poets, their mothers and their mother tongues.
